Widely read:
May hadn’t been a good month for the Indian stock markets and its succeeding month followed suit. June turned out to be dismal for the overall markets, with not even one equity fund category posting positive results.
During the entire month, the markets were in turmoil and predictably, the fund ratings witnessed a number of ups and downs. As many as 13 mutual funds were elevated to the highly esteemed 5-star category. These were Birla Sun Life Asset Allocation Conservative, Birla Sun Life Cash Plus Retail, Birla Sun Life MIP II Savings 5, Birla Sun Life Short-term Retail, Canara Robeco Gilt (PGS), ICICI Prudential Flexible Income, ICICI Prudential Gilt Treasury, Sahara Gilt, Sundaram BNP Paribas Select Focus Reg, Tata Liquid Super HI, Templeton Floating Rate ST Retail, UTI Infrastructure and UTI Sunder. The thing to take note of here is that out of these 13, only three are equity funds.
Sundaram BNP Paribas Select Focus Reg achieved the 5-star status for the first time in its lifetime. UTI Infrastructure regained its 5-star rating, which it had lost in April this year. The equity diversified category saw a number of other interesting changes as well. Four funds in the category got upgraded to the 4-star status, namely, HSBC India Opportunities, ICICI Prudential Advisor – Very Aggressive, Sahara Growth and Sundaram BNP Paribas Growth Reg. The funds which were dragged down to 4-stars from the 5-star status were BoB Growth and HDFC Top 200. Apart from that, DBS Chola Opportunities, ING Nifty Plus and Reliance NRI Equity slipped down to the 3-star bracket.
This month a few select funds got added to the Value Research Fund Rating family; seven of them, to be precise. The new members were Reliance Regular Savings Equity, JM Basic, OptiMix Active Debt Multi Manager FoF, UTI Dividend Yield, ING Midcap, DBS Chola Global Advantage and Reliance Regular Savings Balanced. The first of these seven, Reliance Regular Savings Equity, made it to the 4-star bracket straightaway.
Amongst the fund houses, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund earned top honours by owning the highest number of 5-star funds. The fund house had four 5-star funds in May, which increased to seven in June. Tata Mutual Fund had the maximum number of 4-star funds: 13. Birla Sun Life and ICICI Prudential had the highest number of 5-star and 4-star funds: 16 each.
Overall, the month of June saw 68 downgrades and 72 upgrades, while 349 funds maintained a status quo. The fund which witnessed the steepest fall in ratings was ICICI Prudential Gilt Investment PF. The fall in its rating by three stars can be attributed to a fall in its return score (the return of the fund has fallen drastically in comparison to the category). Other funds that underwent a significant decline in ratings were DSPML GSF Longer Duration, ICICI Prudential Gilt Investment, Reliance Gilt Long-term and IDFC GSF Short-term. Each of these funds moved two steps down the ladder.
On the other hand, the major upgrades of the month were Fidelity Cash Super Inst, BoB Gilt, Escorts Gilt, ING Gilt, and JM G-Sec Regular Plan. All these funds had a good time with a jump of two steps ahead in the rating ladder.
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